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What's the name for a DAG (directed acyclic graph) that has a unique root or source node from which every other node can be reached?

Alternatively, if you change the direction of the arrows, what's the name for a DAG that has some unique sink node that is reachable from every other node?

Here's an example graph:

example graph

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There isn't a standard name for that, at least none I'm aware of. I've seen that structure being called "rooted DAG", by analogy with "rooted tree".

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In a directed graph we do not speak of roots and leaves, but of sources and sinks.

I'm not aware of any term that designates a DAG with only a single source, but you could just call it that: "a DAG with a single source".

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the suggestion, and I've updated my question to say source and sink as well. $\endgroup$
    – Jo Liss
    Dec 28, 2016 at 14:57
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If you think of the DAG as a graph whose reachability relation is a partial order relation, then an element with that property would be a minimum element in that relation.

I haven't seen the term "minimum element" used this way before, but I suspect that someone seeing that notation would likely be able to understand it if you included a quick explanatory sentence.

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